GELATING AGENT FOR ALKALINE CELL AND ALKALINE CELL

A gelating agent for an alkaline cell is a cross-linked polymer (A) comprising (meth)acrylic acid and/or its alkali metal salt as a main constituent monomer unit and obtained by an aqueous solution polymerization or a reversed phase suspension polymerization and satisfies the following required conditions (1), (2). The gelating agent has good draining property, satisfactorily high speed charging property of the alkaline electrolytic solution and is therefore effective to produce cells with little unevenness of the charging amount of the electrolytic solution and having uniform quality by mass production and an alkaline cell using the gelating agent is provided with durable discharge time and remarkably excellent impact resistance for a long duration. The said required conditions are required condition (1); that the gelating agent contains 50 % by weight or more of a particle whose swollen particle size becomes 300 to 4,000 mu m when the gelating agent is swollen in an aqueous potassium hydroxide solution of 40 % by weight concentration and required condition (2); that the aqueous potassium hydroxide solution of 40 % by weight concentration containing 3 % by weight of the gelating agent has 0 to 20 mm stringiness.